City watch.

Art touches the little park that could

May 20, 2003|By Jon Anderson, Tribune staff reporter.

Gross Park, the small, grassy mall in the Lincoln-Belmont area, has had its share of problems.

Some years ago, a nearby Goldblatt's department store wanted to seize the strip and pave it for parallel parking. In the 1990s, Asian longhorned beetles moved in, infesting 22 trees, which had to be chopped down.

Then, a ginko tree was hit--and killed--by a swerving truck.

But all that was history last weekend as residents gathered under a warm spring sun to admire what toil, sweat, fertilizer--and $118,000 from the city--can accomplish. There was music, poetry and dancing.

Now, four years after the beetle disaster, Gross Park is a tiny urban oasis, with a path of wood chips, along with shade trees, shrubs, lilies, geraniums, tulips, daffodils, hydrangeas and--until July 20--a sculpture display.

"This area doesn't have much green space," Sara Bales, president of the Gross Park Neighbors Foundation, said Saturday, explaining why people--many of them pushing baby-filled strollers--had come from blocks around.

Many came to scope out the 16 works of art in a free show titled "The World Needs a Good Superhero These Days."

But what its organizers made clear was that they were reaching beyond Batman and his ilk to also honor "little people" who "followed their conviction to do what is right, despite the perceived risks and dangers."

Though they were too modest to say so, that category might well include the three dozen members of the foundation, all of whom live in the 1700 block of West Henderson Street, between Paulina Street and Ravenswood Avenue.

To make their little park bloom has been no easy matter.

In an era when neighborliness often seems to be on the wane, people who share little except proximity have come out of their homes on a regular basis to weed, edge, trim, plant--and climb down manholes to start the sprinklers.

"It's a great thing," said one longtime block resident, urbanologist Pierre deVise. "There are very few such parks in Chicago. They are a very exciting diversion from the usual grid of streets. Too bad not more were done."

The idea for the grassy strip, he noted, came from developer Samuel Eberly Gross.

A flamboyant real-estate promoter in the late 1800s, Gross built working-class homes on a street he named for Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of the German Empire. During World War I, the name was changed to Henderson from Otto. Later, the neighborhood declined. The grass became patchy. Then came the beetles.

The turnaround began about six years ago, helped by the dogged efforts of one resident, George Otto, who has since moved away. Otto, of no relation to the chancellor, pushed the city to contribute funds for a new landscaping plan and to provide the initial plantings. He also battled dog owners who let the companions run free in the space.

"George is our hero," said deVise, though much of the work these days is done by the foundation members.

They pitch in during Saturday Work-Fun Days and raise about $4,000 a year toward park expenses.